double post
Great post, unfettered capitalism will lead to monopolies etc,when there is sensible government intervention we do see capitalism work well. In the above examples they made very specific strategy decisions based on what was best for their countries int he short and long term based on current environments. If they don’t change as the world changes then we could see what has happened in Japan happen in Germany.
In Australia we saw during the 1980’s our left government (Labor) introduce things like a floating dollar, sold off state enterprises, freed up labour laws etc. These were incentives for capital to come to Australia and has lead us to great outcomes over the last 30 years.
So simply put, unfettered capitalism sucks.
People can still trade in a system unlike the current model. Why does trading require exponential GDP growth?
Under the existing model, if “the economy” is even a fraction of a percent smaller this year than it was last year (that is, still larger than pretty much every year in the history of the Earth) then we are “in recession” and it’s a disaster. Why? Constant GDP growth of a modest 3% implies that the economy has to double in size four times each century, for ever. Given how much of the Earth’s resources we are using up right now just to keep the status quo, we’d better hope that solar system exploration comes sooner rather than later.
Unfettered capitalism doesn’t exist. Of course there are different ways that it works depending on the country, but no matter what, we’re going to have capitalism unless we figure out an entirely new model that no one knows about yet.
We don’t have unfettered personal liberty in any country either, but as long as we don’t live in the dark ages, Western governments will start from the assumption that the people should be free. The same will go for economics.
Well, if the economy grows at the rate of population, that’s a slump, not a recession.
That’s a common misconception. Economic growth can take the form of better cars and faster computers, not necessarily bigger cars and computers. Now I agree that we have a pretty serious problem with global warming. But remember, in the US CO2 and methane emissions are wholly unregulated by the federal government. You can emit them for free. So it shouldn’t come as a shock that people emit too much of them.
There are free market solutions: put a price on C02 emissions, otherwise known as a fee or a tax. Or require permitting. We could have started doing this 20 years ago, but conservatives blocked such efforts.
I see that adaher conflates economic and civil freedom. I find it strange that modern conservatives consider both free speech and, say, ownership of power plants to be human rights issues. It suggests that they value one too little while exhibiting sheer paranoia about the other.
If people can’t make a living freely, then how can any reasonable person be considered free? The alternative to economic freedom has always been that you work where you are assigned to work. I don’t care if you have the right to urinate on public officials as a form of protest, if you work where they tell you to work, you aren’t free.
This similarly goes for ownership. If all property belongs to the public, then you also are not free.
It’s not just adaher. The first influential equation of market economics and civil freedom was made by Hayek in the Road to serfdom, and it was a pretty substantial contribution, acknowledged by people as far away from Hayek in the economics spectrum as Amartya Sen. Market economies do promote inherent freedoms(although Sen isn’t entirely convinced that they do this to perfection, which is a qualification an academic, especially one on his side of the spectrum, will make). Read more here if you’re interested. If you’re not, here are some quotes
Can you cite when this has every happened?
Actually, it’s highly fettered capitalism that leads to monopolies, as they are extremely difficult to establish, much less maintain, without government backing.
Hint: Standard Oil was never a monopoly, and by the time it was broken up, its command of the market was well below where it was at the peak of its reach.
Yep. The only monopolies in the US are government sanctioned monopolies.
In another thread you posted a (probably incorrect) factoid about Standard Oil’s market share. Ever find a cite?
… And, BTW, the fact that the government’s case against Microsoft was dropped when GWB took office does not prove Microsoft was not exercising monopoly powers adverse to the consumer.
That’s nowhere near enough to justify government intervention though. For that, you’d also have to show that Microsoft could continue exercising those powers in a way that was adverse to the consumer and not make itself vulnerable to competition through doing so. I don’t think you could do that.
No I can’t as it really hasn’t existed in modern time. That was my point if we remove all rules then it is just as bad as having too many rules.
I kind of see what you are saying, but not everything can increase in intrinsic value. Many of the staples of the economy – the things we need to survive in reasonable comfort – retain a constant relative value. Trade encompasses these things, I would venture they frame the economic baseline. So, fundamentally, we do need to use more stuff.
At present, obtaining resources off-planet is not very realistic. Even with a significant increase in exploration for exploitation, the cost is prohibitive, at least with respect to profitability. Technology is likely to change, but the net energy costs are not likely to change enough to make it worthwhile. I cannot see a way to expand beyond the earth’s capacity without at least first stabilizing the Terran economy far more than it is. And that is not for lack of imagination, I enjoy my speculative fiction, but after the last page, it is still fiction.
Trade is not the sole province of capitalism. Any sort of economic system will involve trade.
Freedom is subjective. Those things that enhance your liberty may well be the things that detract from mine. Freedom itself is not a satisfactory argument in favor of capitalism.
That’s a good point, but I don’t see how it applies to economic freedom. My freedom to work where I want or own what I want doesn’t imperil your freedom in any way. And we have anti-trust laws to prevent anyone from gaining the commanding heights of our economy, plus a Constitution that prevents the government from doing the same.
But alas you don’t have the “right or freedom” to work where you want or even own what you want. There are very good reasons for limiting freedoms as they may impinge on the greater societies freedoms…
That’s the problem, there’s no greater society freedom. Freedom only has meaning for the individual. We can talk about balancing societal WELFARE and freedom, but there is no freedom for society.
I think adaher’s premise is that, theoretically, he has a natural right to engage in profitable enterprise of his choosing and that doing so would not compromise my liberty in a significant way. Which is a slightly myopic way of looking at it: you may or may not have the natural right to practice your electric bass at full volume whenever you feel like it, but exercising that right with impunity may well help you discover whether it really is a recognized freedom. On the other hand, a lot of these contentious issues could be mitigated with dialog: if you consult with your neighbors over your bass practice, you might have better luck retaining your right to practice loudly.
More disturbing, though, is adaher’s apparent perception that the system is successfully protecting society from plutocracy and government overreach. From what I can tell, this has not been the case for many decades.
Yep wrong turn of phrase from me, societal welfare sounds a bit lefty though 
In order to restrict my liberty, my actions have to have a direct negative effect on you. Basic liberties cannot be restricted for the sake of something so nebulous as society.
To use your example of the bass, if I’m playing it too loud so that you can’t sleep or generally disturbs your right to peace and quiet, I’m definitely directly harming you. However, if you’re one of those types who thinks my bass playing is harmful to society somehow because maybe I record dirty lyrics or encourage kids to worship the devil, then you’re in the wrong. Which I’m sure we both agree on in that example, since it affects a civil right(freedom of expression) rather than economic rights.
Humans are pretty crafty animals, some of us can think three or four moves ahead and effect results indirectly. If you are granted liberty on the basis of direct harm, then you have carte blanche to cause indirect harm, because you can claim that you were not proximate. The troubling aspect to this is that it is usually not possible to determine whether the indirect harm was incidental or deliberate, so we build a complex base of legal code to avoid having the issues develop in the first place.
Now, I for one am not in favor of complex legal code based on the fact that I have seen it abused in some pretty unforgivable ways. On the other hand, I do favor prophylaxis, because fixing broken shit is a lot more work and expense than making sure it does not get broken in the first place.
In the end, it is a difficult issue that I am not smart enough to resolve. Yet, you are willing to just throw up your hands and pick the easy answer, apparently because it sounds good to you, so I would venture that you are no more qualified than I am. I even doubt that there is any one person who is (or was) smart enough, but I do believe that a bunch of us could probably figure something out together.
Or we could just keep treating it like some kind of game, where “my guys” “win” some of the time and “your guys” sometimes “win” but most of us end up losing.